Israel celebrates failure of 20th anniversary event of UN’s Durban Conference
Israel has celebrated its diplomatic achievements which brought the withdrawal of 34 countries from a United Nations event marking the 20thanniversary of the infamous Durban Conference.
The United Nations itself is allowing evil to triumph with the complicity of the West.
In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), the UN General Assembly held a high-level meeting on the theme “Reparations, racial justice and equality for people of African descent.”
However, because the first conference in 2001 turned into an anti-Israel and antisemitic bashing festival, Israel waged a diplomatic campaign to ensure the event failed.
No head of state spoke at the event, except the South African president who sponsored the rally. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian addressed the event as well. He was involved in Iran’s death committees of the 1980s that were responsible for the extra judiciary executions of thousands and other human rights violations.
“The halls of the UNGA are empty, and with good cause. Honourable men and women will not dignify this antisemitic event with their presence,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry stated Wednesday.
Israel thanked Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, the UK, the United States, Honduras, Albania, Uruguay, Poland, Montenegro, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, Macedonia, Estonia, Lithuania, and the Dominican Republic for their withdrawal from the 20th anniversary event of the UN’s Durban Conference.
The original Durban Conference, an UN-hosted event, “became the worst international manifestation of antisemitism since World War II,” the Foreign Ministry said, including “inflammatory speeches, discriminatory texts, and a pro-Hitler march that took place outside the halls” that were “only part of the ugliness displayed in 2001.”
“The World Conference on Racism actually ended up encouraging it, including through the parallel NGO forum, which displayed caricatures of Jews with hooked noses and fangs dripping with blood, clutching money,” the Foreign Ministry charged.
“20 years later, some of the same organizations have waged a BDS campaign against the only democracy in the Middle East, but they have FAILED. Israel is a thriving state that is increasing its cooperation with countries in the region and will continue to do so,” the Foreign Ministry stated.
The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated earlier this month that its “strongly objected on behalf of the State of Palestine to what it describes as the ‘inimical statements and tendentious’ attacks against the Durban Conference.
“Such iniquitous calls to boycott the Conference display an alarming level of deficit in morality and expose a hypocritical approach to entrench attitudes of exceptionalism that have long aggravated the endemic racism, particularly against people of African descent,” the Ministry asserted.
The PA’s Foreign Ministry called on the international community to “unite together to end racism and discrimination in all its forms and not dissect its many layers of pain and injustice.”
